.jpg)
Found-HER with Kimberley Hiebert
Found-HER with Kimberley Hiebert is the podcast for female founders navigating the messy middle of building a legacy business, while taking you behind the scenes of developing a franchise system and talking about all the parts of being a founder that no one prepares you for. Through a mix of solo and authentic, biz-bestie level conversations with guests, you’ll hear the real stories behind the build and the self-discovery that becomes the true engine of growth, not just the highlight reel.
This is a space for business owners who are breaking barriers, building their dreams and putting community first. Think of this like your founder's therapy, where you have full permission to be honest and embrace the human side of entrepreneurship.
Join every other Thursday to hear stories from women who are still in it: finding themselves, building boldly, and rewriting what it means to be a Found-HER.
Found-HER with Kimberley Hiebert
Funding, Networks, and Getting to a Million
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
What if the biggest barrier to growing your business isn't what you know, but who you have access to? Today's guest, Erin Sisko, is changing the conversation around women, business, and opportunity. A former commercial banker turned founder of Elleiance Network, Erin shares why she believes women don't have a knowledge gap, they have an access gap. We talk about leaving the security of corporate, building a national community for women entrepreneurs, and why relationship capital is one of the most valuable assets you can build as a founder.
We also explore why more women need pathways to funding, mentorship, and business acquisition, and how Erin is creating those opportunities through the Capital Elle Business Impact Award. This conversation is a powerful reminder that success isn't built alone, it's built through the rooms you enter, the people who believe in your vision, and the doors that open because someone chose to create access. If you've ever felt overlooked while building something meaningful, I think this episode will really resonate with you. Please leave a review, share it with your business bestie, and connect with me on Instagram @Kimberley.Hiebert. I'd love to hear what stood out most.
Website: https://www.elleiance.ca/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elle.iance/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-elleiance-network/
Links:
Hey Bestie, Sign Up for Our Found-Her Newsletter!
Website: https://found-her.ca
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberley.hiebert
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kimberleyhiebert
Door Gurus: https://doorgurusfranchise.com
Welcome to Found Her, the podcast for women who build empires, break barriers, and blaze trails all while fighting themselves. These are bestie level conversations from behind the scenes. The real work, the messy middle, and the wins that last. I'm Kimberly Hebert, founder, franchise builder, wife, mom, and Grammy, and a woman who has done the inner work while building the outer winds. Here we talk business, identity, relationships, and the kind of growth that cracks you open, then puts you back together. Stronger, better. This is your space to rise as a founder and as your truest self. Let's dive in. Okay, guys, besties. Today's guest is someone who is literally changing the conversation around women, business, and access in a really powerful way. Aaron Sisko is the founder of the Alliance Network and the creator of the Capital L Business Impact Award. This is a national initiative supporting Canadian woman entrepreneurs who have been overlooked, underestimated, or denied access to capital. A former commercial banker turned access strategist. Aaron is leading bold conversations around relationship, capital, access economics, and why women do not have a knowledge gap. They actually have an access gap. I mean, you guys, we were just before we hit recording, we were just kind of jamming a little bit. And she was so lit up in this category. We were just chatting. I was like, oh my gosh, we got to hit record and get some of this. So what I love about Erin's work is that she is not just talking about the problem, but she is actively creating a solution. She is a trailblazer when it comes to helping women find pathways to be seen, funded, and supported. So thank you, Erin, for joining us today. I'm so excited because I've been on this trail the last six or eight months in funding and trying to get access to partners and extra funding and that kind of stuff for what I'm doing. So I think this is a great conversation. Welcome to the Found Her podcast.
SPEAKER_01Thank you. That's amazing. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00Did you want to provide any more context a little bit to our listeners or my listeners as to who you are? What makes you so what makes you so special in the category of access and capital for women?
SPEAKER_02Well, you touched on a lot of it. I am an ex-commercial banker. So I spent 10 years funding founders through the Business Development Bank of Canada. And it was a really pivotal time in my life, actually. Prior to joining the BDC, I actually didn't even know one entrepreneur. So when I got to start working with founders, that was when, you know, I realized that they were my people. I just thought that they were the most interesting people I had ever met. And I loved my job at the BDC because I got to support them and hear their dreams and their goals and watch them build and change communities and economies. And it was just fascinating and exciting for me. So that was one like kind of pivot in my brain. And I think it slowly also started to plant some very important seeds for me that maybe this was a path that I could explore for myself that had never been planted before.
SPEAKER_00So that's why it's important who you hang out with.
SPEAKER_02And you can't be what you can't see, right? So that was pivotal. About seven years into my career, I started to realize that I was only funding men. Um literally every single phone call I got for a meeting was from a male business owner. And I find it interesting that it took me seven years to pay attention to that. But when it landed, it stuck. And I got really curious as to why that was, and I wanted to understand more. So when the bank came to me that same year and asked if I would be the ambassador for women entrepreneurs for Eastern and Northern Ontario, I happily said yes because I already kind of had this on my mind that I wanted to explore this further. So it was just super aligned. And I went out, I talked to as many women as I could get my hands on in my network at the time. I live in Thunder Bay, Ontario. So that is just one factor here to keep in mind.
SPEAKER_00But what I think community, Thunder Bay small community?
SPEAKER_02Thunder Bay has a population of 110,000. Oh, okay. But where we are super unique is we are very remote in Ontario. We are northwestern Ontario, and we are about an eight-hour drive from any other decent sized city.
SPEAKER_00Oh, okay, that far.
SPEAKER_02East and west. So yeah, geographically, we are kind of unique in Ontario, is just a very massive province. About, I don't know, 23 hours to get across it, tip to tip. So we are um, I'm actually an eight-hour drive from Winnipeg, Manitoba. Anyways, the women, every single one of them told me some version of the same message, which was our biggest challenge in growing our business is making the right connections. So that was what started the Alliance Network, which I now say is a business mastermind community for Canadian women entrepreneurs. It started in my hometown in person at just in Thunder Bay, Ontario, and it just slowly grew. I launched one mastermind group, then another, then another, then another. And eventually it became a conflict with the bank, and I had to make a tough decision on whether.
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's what I was gonna ask you. What prompted you to go out on your own?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so the bank saw it as a conflict of interest and said, you either have to shut it down or you have to leave. And that was an interesting time as well because I was terrified.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, let's let's lean into that a little bit because I have a lot of listeners who are there. They're kind of like teetering in both worlds, right? Paid employment and entrepreneurship. They want to have more control and impact over what they're doing, but there's this security with paid employment, right? So this paycheck to profit mentality. Tell us maybe if you can go back and talk to us, yeah, what helped you make that jump?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So for me, my situation was is that I was the Alliance Network was free, but I was leading it and I was growing it, and I was facilitating these two-hour mastermind meetings with five different groups of 10 of entrepreneur women in my city. And so that's who I got. I feel lucky because that's who I got to spend my time with, and I would show up for them every week and help them. It was free, it was free because I worked.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so you weren't making an so you weren't making an income from it. Okay.
SPEAKER_02No, I worked at the bank and I was the ambassador for women entrepreneurs. So, like in my mind, I'm fulfilling my role here, right? This is what the women told me they wanted. But because this is the work I'm doing, I'm showing up every week and I'm encouraging these women to dream bigger and go for their goals, and I'm helping them do it, and I'm their biggest cheerleader, right? Yeah, and now all of a sudden it's my time. And I remember looking at myself in the mirror, being like, Erin, are you actually gonna go back to every single one of these women and be like, I know I tell you guys to chase big dreams. But when it comes to myself, I actually don't believe in myself. So I'm shutting all of this down and I'm going back to my corporate job at the bank. I was like, no, no, that's not me. I can't do that. So and I have Wow, I love that.
SPEAKER_00That takes, you know what? That that in itself speaks to your level of like, you know, you say what you mean, you mean what you say, you're yeah, meeting with these uh women that are doing big, big things, betting on themselves, and now you're given an opportunity to do the same thing. And instead of choosing the safe route, what you already knew, the comfort, all that, you chose to go all in on yourself.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And going back to what you said on who you surround yourself with, I had these women that cheered me on, that believed in me before I quite believed in myself enough. And that was like, Erin, you got this. We got you, you know, like you're amazing at this. We need this, other people need this, you're building something important, like just poured enough belief in me at a time when I just needed to like have somebody else say that to me. It was like this perfect storm, and but like in the best way possible. And it was just enough for me to be like, okay, I'm gonna try it. And of course, we know like I was in banking, I was in personal banking before that. So I was like, some bank will hire me. Like, if this really doesn't feel like you got a backup plan, I can go back to banking. So, what I did do that was really important is I built the product, I tested the product for free, I got feedback on the product that it was needed, that when I had to start charging, because now it's my business. No questions asked, which wow, I'm just very grateful for. But I think that's because I built, you know what I mean? I tested, I tried, I served to like to my maximum ability. And so that's what I would like. You will know, you will know. And if you have to go slow, like I had two little kids at home, my kids were three and five. It was still terrifying, but I had done enough with the safety of my paycheck to prove to myself enough, right? Like you're never gonna be fully ready for this. It's like becoming a mom. You can never fully prepare for like what's ahead. Yeah, but I did just enough to be like you got this. Go, you're gonna figure it out. And that was almost five years ago. And I'm still like I'm obsessed with what I do. It's not that it's easy, but the the easiest thing in the world is to keep showing up every day and trying to figure it out because I just love it so much and I feel grateful.
SPEAKER_00And the easy I think you've learned the skill to rely on yourself. So we have this like I'm writing a whole thing called paycheck to profit, and I don't want to derail our podcast interview, but there's this we give, we we give away, we're almost a passive participant in our capacity to earn by by with paid employment, right? Our sky. And for some people it works, but it's like we become safe and secure because we don't have to worry about where the money's coming from to pay us when we're being paid by somebody else. So there's a lull there. But then what happens is when you're the one responsible. Now we call it like it's time for if you want to eat, you have to go hunt when you work for yourself, right? It hones your skills in in being able to count on yourself. You still have the same level of unpredictability because with paid employment, you could be you could be restructured out, you could be let go, you all kinds of things can come and interrupt that. We just lull ourselves to thinking that we have the safety zone. But when you're entrepreneurial, you don't have the safety zone, is you you don't have that buffer, and you learn quickly how to create a sense of confidence and safety, knowing that the buck stops with you. It starts with you and it stops with you. But you don't know that until you're in it. You can't develop that until you're in the field doing it. So I think that that message alone is so fabulous. Thank you for bringing that up.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So that was I left the bank September of 2021, and I decided uh somewhere in that first year, or I just it became crystal clear that I was not gonna be able to build the Alliance network just inside Thunder Bay. I didn't have access to a large enough audience to make the numbers work for me to be able to do just that. So I decided to make it a national community and try to grow it across the country. And that was also, you know, there was a lot that I meant, I am a 40-year-old mom that lives in Thunder Bay, Ontario for her whole entire life. And why I thought that that was just something I could do, I say now, like a little bit of delusion as an entrepreneur goes a long way.
SPEAKER_00Um, I know you're like, yes, we we can spread this. I feel like this is my franchise journey. I'm like, yeah, we'll sell franchises across the country.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00I don't know anybody in Ontario. I don't know anybody anywhere else.
SPEAKER_02I don't know anyone anywhere else. I have to hop on a plane to get anywhere. And I have these two kids. And anyways, it's it's amazing. Uh what once you're in it, you're like, well, this is really hard, but I can't no turning back now, right? I've already committed, and it's amazing what you can figure out when you just keep showing up every single day and trying to figure out ways to figure it out. So now we are either launching or launched in 20 Canadian cities, and that's fabulous. I have a goal to grow it and offer in-person business masterminding in 100 Canadian cities, and I say that now, honestly, with very little doubts that it can be there. That's awesome because you can you can accomplish so much. I am in the middle of, but you know what I mean? You can do business like this. There are platforms and tools that really truly do allow you to access whomever you need to.
SPEAKER_00So so I want to kind of shift the conversation a little bit now because what I'm seeing is a theme in your life. So it was originally access to capital for women. Now it was access to social capital, like so financial capital, it started with, then it was social capital for you, right? Like now you're you're wanting to build this national brand. So now how do I how do I develop social capital? And I think I think there's one other pillar, I can't remember what it is. So I want to yeah, what's the third pillar?
SPEAKER_02I call it acquisition capital. And that's just like a side fun fact is that in 2022 I acquired my first business, which is a bakery, and I'm in the process of acquiring my second business. When I was at the BDC, I funded approximately 100 changes of ownership. And I am very passionate about talking to women about business acquisition as a growth path. So that's my third area. Right.
SPEAKER_00So these are this what I mean, Alec. I'm seeing this like this has been your lived experience. You're taking these lived experiences. So let's talk about where you really started to step up. So you're building this um networking mastermind community business at the same time. These three areas are really glaring for you, right? Financial capital, social capital, and uh building growth. Like, so I tell people this all the time you won't become wealthy just by earning a paycheck. Wealth comes from compounding and multiplying. And some of those strategies are buying other businesses, right? To start to build wealth and have multiple streams. So tell us a little bit. Uh, let's use this. I know typically this is more storytelling, but I want you to share a little bit of how you came about with the uh uh Capital L Award and the passion and purpose behind it because I think it's so important the access to capital, social capital, and funding capital for women.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, thank you. So I launched the Capital L Business Impact Award in 2024, and that was started because I just really had a deep desire to bring a funding element, a meaningful funding element to Canadian women entrepreneurs with my background in funding. I saw where the gaps were, and then in building my community for women and having all of those conversations, um building the right connections is very important. Social capital is very important. However, if you don't match that up with the right type of growth capital, structured in the right way at the right time with the right partners, it becomes very difficult to scale. And a stat that stood out to me was that 40% of small businesses are owned by women, but only 2% will ever achieve over a million dollars in revenue. And that is not it's not because women don't want to build million-dollar empires. That is the farthest thing from the truth, actually. It is well, one, because it's really hard. Entrepreneurship is hard. Um, but there is a way to do it, and that statistic is wildly different for male-owned businesses.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think part of that, uh, just as you bring that up, some of it is the continuity, right? For women, we're in and out of our workforce based on life cycles. If we're having children, caretaking, aging parents, all those kinds. It's always the women, the women that have this like interruption in the momentum. And I don't, I don't know if that's a contributor, whereas men don't have that. Men, they you know, it's like as soon as they start income earning, they just go straight. There's just like they can continue to build and build and build. Anyway, it's a bigger conversation.
SPEAKER_02No, you're right. That is definitely one factor. It is like everything, it's it's very layered and complex. Yeah, another factor that I just I love to share and remind women of is you are probably the first woman in your family to build wealth through entrepreneurship, to be a trailblazer, to be a founder, to build a company that makes millions of dollars in revenue and hires people, and that you have those types of goals. Like you're probably the first. And if you're not the first, then you're for sure the second. So my reminder is that you are we are the first. You are new. If you feel a little bit of imposter syndrome, that's completely normal and regular. Because when you're doing something and you're the first and you've never done it before, then that's it's it's par for the course. Where men, that's not their story, they probably have generation after generation after generation, and therefore, this conversation around access capital, I get really passionate about because, and this is not a he versus she thing at all. Women have like it's it's societal roles, and women had a very specific role for a very long time, and so did men. So while men are out there building wealth for their families, they are building these alliances and they are invited into opportunities and conversations and networks where this sort of thing happens, and it's been built over multiple generations. So when our sons or our husbands or our fathers step out, they are very easily able to navigate because those people are already done, yes, they've done the the generations before have done the work since birth. They were playing poker and on the golf course at eight years old. Do you know what I mean? Like it's ingrained in their in their DNA. And that we know how that works. It's just it's not to leave anybody out, it's just how networks work. And so, as women, we are we're new. We're like, hello, like uh, what am I supposed to do? This is my first time at the table, you know, and we're learning. So that is another like access to where capital is being exchanged and opportunities are being exchanged, is there they're they're large networks that historically have not included women. So now we just have to build new pathways and do things a little bit differently.
SPEAKER_00And do you think can I can I ask you this question about women and accessing funds? Do you think women have a different uh are held to a different standard for accessing capital? Do you think we're we're required to have more proof and more protection?
SPEAKER_02Yeah. The reason why I'm gonna say yes is because of what I just said, I think for most people, they are this is they're unfamiliar with funding a woman. It is not their familiarity. So therefore, their natural instincts and inclinations and their Subconscious belief systems that have been ingrained. It's not near, it's why it took me seven years to question why I only did business with men as a woman, did not question it. It was completely normal until some switch flipped. And I was like, I want to understand that better because it's doesn't make sense to me. Seven years. Like that is why I brought the coffee to the meetings for three years before I was like, I wonder why they're asking me. It's just how patterns, yeah, yeah. How we operated since the beginning of time. So again, I think it's very subconscious and it's new and unfamiliar. So people are like, this seems different. It's not, and is it safe? And is it okay? And can I trust it? So that's my that's my take on it. It's a lot of subconscious, um, like deep belief systems.
SPEAKER_00It makes total sense because they don't, it's like you don't even know what your your operating system, you don't even know, you just operate until until there's so much awareness and visibility there, then you're like, that's what happened with you. You're like, I didn't even question it until all of a sudden I started questioning it. All of a sudden the awareness shifted. And so I think that that's really super important. Uh, and in building platform and awareness and access for women, it's because in doing so, you're also increasing the visibility, which starts to impact how uh how everyone starts to see the opportunity. They start seeing the opportunity, not the gender. So, you know, you've been following me along. I've been on a bit of a circuit for funding and um visibility, and it's all within the female-oriented platforms. And my husband, who's my co-founder, has been along for the ride, and he's watching in these arenas and watching the response to people, and it's not just me because it's other women also being um highlighted. He's like, you know, and my husband is the classic old white dude, white privilege, old white dude. I call him that all the time because you know, and again, he was born into the very patterns that you explain. He's born into. And he got uh one of one of the competitions we left, and he's like, you know what? He goes, This, I I'm I'm done. Any any male, you're this is you are done. This is the this is the movement for women, and I am here for it. He's clapping, he's like, it is time for us to sit back and allow space to watch, because he saw how many, like probably 20 women come and present different businesses, and his mind is being blown, and he's like, What what have we been gatekeeping and blocking unknowingly? So just him from his own internal perspective. So he's like, Yeah, so for him, it's a powerful shift in this last year. So we see this just our in our own experience. So I like that you're I love that. I love that.
SPEAKER_02I really it sounds like what he is having like an epiphany around is that I truly feel that women are the most untapped resource on this planet because we've had such a narrow role to fulfill in society, very important role, 100%, but it kept us in a box, like a job, right? Right where we weren't able to like fully use our gifts as you know, feminine women. Uh we have we have so much to offer this world, and it's just we are just scratching the surface of it, and there's so there's lots of work to do still around it, and I'm excited. I feel like it's we are growing, you know, and it like there's more and more and more of us that are stepping outside and saying, I can do this, you want to put their their superpowers to use for the greater good of the planet, and it's really exciting to see.
SPEAKER_00Okay, so we just we uh our time is going by really rapidly, and I want an opportunity for you to talk a little bit about I I'm gonna call it the expanded version of the Capital L Award this year coming up, if you don't mind sharing, because what you shared off recording was pretty epic because it the capital L Award has also gone through its own iterations and is growing in recognition and value and what it's contributing and making accessible. So please share a little bit more about that so that the listeners have this uh idea so they can find it.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. So the Capital L Business Impact Award in 2026, uh, we actually just closed our partnership opportunities this week. So from what I can see, uh, I don't want to speak out of turn because I'm still doing all the math, but it's looking like it's going to be a $100,000 funding program for Canadian women entrepreneurs, which is mind-blowingly exciting for me. Um, it started in 2024 with a $20,000 funding prize.
SPEAKER_00Wow, that's so amazing.
SPEAKER_02It's it's grown into something pretty incredible. And this year we are doing something different, and it's really centered around the access gap. Um, I decided that I wanted to curate and be really intentional about how I funded women this year. And I have centered it around, I'm calling them pillars, but three of the access gaps that I have experienced in my life, and that is social capital, growth capital, and acquisition capital, or growth through acquisition. And so this year's award is really for specifically for those female founders and women that know in order to reach their next level of success in their companies, that one of these three things is the unlock for that. And we are like who is in these pillar packages is a combination of a cash component and like the top industry experts in Canada, literally like the best ones that I could find, and they have all agreed to be a part of this, which I'm so grateful for. But it has come together better than I could have dreamed of. And we are going to spend all of 2027 uh working with these three women to help them expand and level up their networks, to raise the necessary capital and to help them grow through acquisition and buy their first or next company and really make that possible for them. So applications for the Capital L Business Impact Award open on September 2nd and close on October 28th of 2026. And you'll see a lot more um going out over on this project over the summer. So keep your eyes open for that.
SPEAKER_00But um pretty I'm really excited. This is really quite a great expansion into supporting women in all different areas. So, how can people find you and follow along so that they don't miss the opportunities? And really, it's not only just the opportunities that you're providing, Erin. You are also paving the way and developing your own entrepreneurial muscle along the way as you lean into these big visions. Both of them, one started where you wanted to, you know, scale nationally, uh, network and mastermind. And now another one big vision for funding uh uh females in Canada. Very big, ambitious visions that you have. This is inspirational to other entrepreneurs that are looking to build and scale nationally or internationally, whatever that be. So, where can people follow you along and then also your uh projects?
SPEAKER_02So on LinkedIn is where I show up the most. So Aaron Cisco on LinkedIn is my personal page, and then we have um alliance pages both on LinkedIn and on Instagram, which is l-e-l-l-e dot iance on Instagram. Okay, and if you get a chance, if you go over to the website, which is alliance.ca, that has also all the information, and you can subscribe to the newsletter if you like where you will be kept up to date.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, awesome. Uh all we will drop all the uh links in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you for your time today. I'm really excited for the future of not only Erin, but also for the women at large that are uh involved with your organizations.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Thank you for having me.
SPEAKER_00Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Found Her podcast. If you've enjoyed it, please, please, please leave me a review, subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes, and more importantly, please share with your business bestie. You can join our newsletter, find me on Instagram, all the places. I would love to hear your feedback and connect with you during your journey of building your legacy.
